Welcome to our open, self-paced ESL study group. We can and hope to add networks to the group. This blog is the hub where you can find lessons, links to ESL learning resources, leave links to add to the network, post comment and questions. The study group project is experimental. Participate by sharing ideas and suggestions.

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Audiobooks, audiofiles and podcasts are good listening practice. They are also ideal for "multi-tasking." You can listen to them when you are doing something else and your hands aren't free to to hold a book. But you can also use them to improve your reading skills. Find or print out a copy of the book or article to read along while you listen.

Free Audio Books

LibriVox is the king of free audio books. You can use the catalog to search through their library of nearly 1000 works, all part of the public domain. If you’re feeling generous, you can even contribute wiki-style by recording audio of your own.

AudioBooksForFree also has a big catalog to sort through, with an emphasis on classic works, but a decent amount of mystery, sci-fi, and thriller as well. The only catch here is that you’ll have to pay for quality: the lowest quality downloads are free but anything better than 8 Kbps costs $5-8.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Daily English Activities is a site is for EFL | ESL students. Each day you can find a new simple online activity to help you improve your English.

For example, you can "Exercise Your Ears With Authentic Film Clips" (Saturday September 6). Watching and understanding films in English can be very difficult, but Yolango is a website that makes it much easier. The site has a huge collection of clips from films and has subtitles or the script to help you understand them.

Movies are a great way to practice understanding, especially if you are a movie buff (fan). If you watch on video or CD, you can pause when you don't understand a passage. Here's another, older site on using movies to study English: The English Learner Movie Guide.